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NASA Trying To Reinvent Their Approach
coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA has started down the road to reinvention with the addition of four new committees to the external advisory group that drives the agency's direction. "The four new committees include Commercial Space, Education and Public Outreach, Information Technology Infrastructure, and Technology Innovation. The council's members provide advice and make recommendations to the NASA administrator about agency programs, policies, plans, financial controls and other matters pertinent to NASA's responsibilities. In the realm of commercial space, NASA has been pushed by outside experts to leave low Earth orbit flights to other aerospace firms. The Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report recently took that a step further in recommending: A new competition with adequate incentives to perform this service should be open to all US aerospace companies. This would let NASA focus on more challenging roles, including human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit based on the continued development of the current or modified NASA Orion spacecraft."
Slashdot user A: This is great!
Slashdot user B: What a waste of money! We may not even need unmanned missions to space, let alone manned missions. Let's fix earth, instead.
Slashdot user A: You jackass. We need to be able to colonize other planets, either because (1) we such at conservation, or (2) eventually we'll get hit by a killer asteroid, or (3) eventually the sun will go out / go boom.
Slashdot user B: Those are all very speculative or a long time off. We have more pressing problems here and now.
I just wanted to get that preliminary stuff out of the way.
More committees. Way to think outside the box.
If they want to reinvent their approach, perhaps they should start by not creating multiple committees every time they want to accomplish something ... or am I forgetting the long track record of success by new committees at already-bloated government organizations?
What it's supposed to do is stuff that's valuable to humanity, but costs a lot of money and isn't expected to make a profit. This is essentially the role of any government organization: Do the things that will benefit everyone, but that businesses are unwilling to take on because there isn't enough money in it.
Low Earth Orbit is now at the point where we can see possibilities for how to make money there, so the time is right to hand it over to commercial interests. However, there is no particularly obvious or near-term profit motive for exploring other planets. Thus, if we want it done, NASA is going to have to do it, because nobody else will (except other governments).
Of course, in order for NASA to do that sort of stuff, it needs a lot more money than it has now. Personally, I'd like to see NASA get at least 2% of the total budget, which is more than 3 times what it gets now, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.
Committee: The only known form of life with 6 or more legs, and no brain.
(From the notebooks of Lazarus Long
Once we find out if asteroid detection, deflection or destruction is trivial and reliable, then we can go on to mentally masturbating about colonizing other bodies.
I presume the NASA memory foam will come into play here. We should be good to go.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
A press release in search of a mission.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_should_the_government
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
They would do well to put the moon and Mars on the back burner and focus on the asteroids. Then set aside a few hundred million a year in x-prize style incentives open to *everyone* not just US companies.
Focus on alternative propulsion and energy systems as chemical engines are not going to get us very far. Get NASA out of Earth to LEO and focused toward targets that are farther out and harder to reach. Let SpaceX and friends take care of launch costs to LEO. Focus on utilising robotic missions where possible and reserve human space flight for in depth study where the time lag/AI insufficiencies become problematic. Get hacking on the problem of orbital space debris- that will be a major problem if we're going to be going to do anything outside of our atmosphere.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
No one grows up wanting to fuck up an asteroid.
Ha, not so! Inspired by many hours playing asteroid, to this day I love the idea of blasting the fuck out of asteroids! NASA's Deep Impact mission was just about the coolest thing ever! Comet, asteroid, planet, the freaking moon, whatever. I say bring it on!
In fact, if you made the (granted somewhat dubious) assumption that the portion of my allowance that I spent on pretending to blow shit up in space as a kid should be reflected by the federal budget, then not only would the entirety of NASA be devoted to building rockets for fucking up asteroids and other heavenly bodies, NASA would be about 80% of the budget. The DoJ would be operating on a shoestring budget. Sorry guys, I know you have stuff to blow up here, but Titan is acting cocky and needs its ass kicked!
The enemies of Democracy are
The linked article didn't seem to mention it anywhere, but it's worth noting who the heads of the new committees are:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29537
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/091030-bolden-revamps-nasa-advisory-council.html
* Commercial Space Committee: Bretton Alexander, current head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation
* Education and Public Outreach: Miles O'Brien, pretty much the best and most clueful space journalist around
* Technology and Innovation Committee: Esther Dyson, well known for her tech entrepreneurship work
* (IT Infrastructure Committee chair seems to be pending)
All in all, they seem to be rather good picks. It also seems that Wesley Huntress has been chosen as the chair of the Science Committee. In 2004 he was head of a study, The Next Steps in Exploring Deep Space, a rather fascinating report proposing a space exploration infrastructure which would initially focus on Lagrange points and Near-Earth Objects, quite similar to the Flexible Path option proposed by the Augustine Commission.